Back when I was in 9th grade our English class was reading Lord of the Flies and nearly everyone in our class absolutely hated Piggy. I always found it a bit odd because he seemed like one of the few noble people in the book. They hated him so much a lot of my classmates were happy when he died. Considering what the book is about do you think that’s a normal response? What are your thoughts of him?
by literally_a_toucan
37 Comments
I felt the same way. He was one of the few decent people in it. Also, he was the “nerd”, and you’d think the others would want a smart person in the group to help them survive. But that’s teens for you.
I hated the book, I wanted Jack dead so badly. It’s my head cannon that he probably died a miserable alcoholic
Piggy symbolises intellect and rationalism. Funny that your class should hold the same opinion of him as the other boys in the book.
I remember reading this book and thinking this sounds like the little asshole boys who ran my neighborhood when I was younger
I remember a similar reaction when we watched the film in class. After we read the book. A lot of the boys in the class were gleeful when Piggy gets hit with the rock.
Looking back from the perspective of an adult, I think it speaks to truths that were laid out in the text. Younger and immature boys are often prone to follow the strong, violent, and brash leader, no matter how poor a leader they may be. It’s cooler to put on war paint, sharpen sticks into spears, and run through the jungle with torches hunting monsters because that’s what strong men do. Why listen to the nerd with glasses that wants to work all day or the timid boy that thinks we should vote and talk about things?
Immature boys will identify with Jack. They’ll also hate Piggy and to some extent Ralph.
the way the boys treat him is illustrative of our culture treating people with disabilities, especially if those disabilities are invisible.
Piggy has a chronic condition which requires medication. without access to medication he will die. regardless of him having good ideas or being of use to the group, he is still a human being that deserves empathy. i do not know if this empathy is something that comes with age, requires teaching, or something you are born with.
on a side note. i have read a few post-apoc books that try to use the end of the world to build a more just community, and they always miss people with disabilities and those requiring medication to survive.
I liked Piggy. I did not like the book.
I read the book last month and instantly realizing we would never even know his name when he was reintroduced to other boys by Ralph was a sad moment. Of course he is just a symbol for reason/science but still, Ralph being responsible for Piggy dying nameless makes you sympathize with him less while he was being chased down. Or maybe it was just me.
I think Piggy was amazing character with definite strengths and weaknesses, and when a character in books or movies make you feel range of emotions, I think the writer has created something great, too.
Footnote: when a group of teen boys got shipwrecked in real life, they agreed to cooperate and take care of each other. They were all in good shape when they were rescued 16 months later. Goldman was full of it. (Google “real life lord of the flies”)
He was the only sensible one.
I appreciated him for what he symbolized but I felt bad for him as a character because of how the other boys treated him, but I also knew quite a few people who always thought they were better than everyone else because they were smart and felt that they should therefore be listened to. I really wished he had stood up for himself a bit more rather than whining all the time; like why not punch the shit out of the choir kids??!
When I saw LOTF on Italian television, I felt for piggy because I was fat and short sighted too. No asthma, luckily.
In a similar situation I’d be the piggy of the group and I’d easily end with a pole in my ass.
I really liked most of the main characters, Piggy included.
I absolutely loved Piggy when I read the book in high school, he was my favorite character
I liked him. I was sad when he was killed. It’s wild to hear that he was so hated in your class.
I was pretty annoyed with most of the characters in that book. I felt like I was in a poorly controlled 3rd grade classroom the entire time I was reading. I know that was the point but damn was it an annoying read
I always felt bad for him. He’s just a nice kid who happens to have asthma and glasses. His death made me cry.
Got a trash deal.
Also, good thing you didn’t get trapped on an island with your class.
He was such a wonderful character. Reasonable and loyal savagely taken out by those who want chaos.
My class which was mainly guys, seemed to understand the Ralph best and knew piggy was right but in that situation followers look to a leader even if flawed like Ralph. But everyone in the class hated Jack and his blind followers. But with group think being a very real problem, I can’t help but wonder how many actually in reality would be the type to follow jack.
Sadly that book does lay out the truth about people in general.
I was so sad for him.
Sucks to his ass-mar
Piggy is a fat loser who is dependent for his survival on rules of civilization that do not, in fact, exist. His very life can only be supported by these higher-level social considerations, since he contributes nothing of material value to the other children. He represents scholarship, decency, rules of order, all the things that make our lives comfortable, and when those things are stripped away, he is doomed. His obesity is an aspect of his lack of material value; he is incapable of direct physical contribution to the group. His intellectual contributions are far greater but those are essentially worthless. He is easy to feel pity and contempt for because he is both shrill and insistent, and at the same time is utterly vulnerable. He’s a little scold and his death is the death of all illusion that the children, or by extension any human being, is ever safe from barbarism.
I *was* Piggy, albeit skinny and asthmatic rather than fat, speccy, and asthmatic. I could very much see my peers killing me off if we were in a similar situation. I found Lord of the Flies rather sobering.
“I am piggy.”
That’s what I thought when I read that book.
I am now approaching half a century in years, and I still don’t understand almost everybody’s total lack of altruism and or empathy. It seems to be natural that most people take, hit, steal, and make an effort to dominate.
Even places that are supposed to be a major sanctuary from modern aggression [like the Amish community](https://apnews.com/article/religion-pennsylvania-sexual-abuse-by-clergy-assault-lancaster-0e97364f986c9b9fffaed44520fc2b1f) have pockets of major worldly abuse.
There seems to be something required in every human community that there have to be hunters and helpers and bullies and victims. I don’t know why. When I was younger, I believed that there was a skill involved in living above what comes to us instinctively. The more time that goes by, I see the rise of selfish and destructive habits, lack of care for the future, and all living things. I do not believe we will, in the long term, survive the chase for profit and dominance.
Piggy tried. And they killed him for it. Those boys lucked out in the end…but they had to live with what they did. Like most people, though, I believe they would have been largely unaffected by the events that occurred on the island. They would just have moved on, because truly, they didn’t care enough about anything but survival and *who had the goddamn conch*. Once the society they had created fell apart, the murder began.
I never had the instinct to kill animals or ridicule or denigrate. I’ve been surrounded by people who seem to take joy in doing all of those things for various reasons. Like their purpose, their mission seems to be to hurt and harm. And sometimes, they don’t even seem to know that what they’re doing is wrong, or vicious.
Piggy represented to me, my place in society. The guy who tries to stand up for what is decent, and gets thrown off a cliff for it. The cliff isn’t always literal, but sometimes it is. Sometimes, it’s a death by 1000 cuts. Sometimes, it’s banishment or having backs turned on you by everybody you know in your family and friend group. Sometimes it’s people of another color treating you like you’re less than you are because you don’t look like them. Sometimes it’s people who would rather kill you than understand why you love somebody different than they do.
FUCK THOSE WARRIOR ASSHOLE KIDS.
And long live Piggy.
Granted, I read the book for fun and not for school reasons, but I’m pretty surprised your class reacted that way! I was really sad when Piggy died 🙁
Due to childhood trauma, I grew up a lot faster than I should have had to.
I had group therapy as a kid to help me, and it was hugely beneficial, but it didn’t change the fact that I acted more mature than my years, which led to a fair amount of bullying, especially from the athletic boys.
I was able to shake that off, and start becoming my own person despite my troubled youth, and this change started right around the time we read Lord of the Flies in school.
Whenever the teacher wanted to get a nuanced answer about Piggy, she would call on me.
One of the kids, who was kind of a dick at that point, stage whispered that she called on me because I was also chubby and wore glasses.
Amy, the girl he was always trying to impress, turned to him and matter-of-factly said, “it’s because his dad died, Kyle, and he’s seen more of life than the rest of us.”
The teacher took both of them out of the room for a discussion. When they came back in, Amy gave me a smile and Kyle wouldn’t look at me.
The teacher very quickly pivoted and asked the class who thought Piggy deserved to be bullied. All the boys except me and Kyle raised their hands.
She asked one of the girls what they thought, and was told that the boys were too “*boyish!*” and no girl in their right mind would have anything to do with them. The class was very quiet for a few minutes, because all those boys were interested in the girls, even if they wouldn’t admit it.
The teacher said that this book will mean different things to people with different amounts of maturity. She left it at that.
A few years later, Kyle apologized for being a bully. We hadn’t said anything to each other since that incident, and while we were never close friends he always had something nice to say after the apology. I’m friends with him on Facebook and he’s a stand up guy, 35-40 years on.
Piggy is a necessary sacrifice in the narrative, to tell the story the author wanted to tell. Sad, but true.
I mean compared to asshats like Jack and that complete psychopath Roger, Piggy was a breath of fresh air all things considered.
Piggy was the best character… I teared up reading the part where he dies when I was a kid. he was the only rational character.
what a great book.
I felt sorry for him.
Also, I wonder if people generally realise that “the lord of the flies” is one of the many names for Satan…like Beelzebub or Lucifer.
>Here, Golding makes clear that the pig’s head, which is also referred to as Lord of the Flies, another name for the Devil, is a symbol of the beast, which represents evil. During his hallucination, Simon understands that the beast is not something that can be killed because it exists inside humans.
I used to teach this book to sophomore high school students, and many of them would completely forget the title of the book or what it was even about, but they ALWAYS remembered Piggy’s death. I never had students cheer or be happy that he had gotten killed. Most of my students felt empathetic toward him from the beginning, especially when he tries to tell Ralph not to call him Piggy and he immediately does, so the bullying starts right away. Maybe it has to do with the way I would present the novel and the characters, but I never had students hate him. They thought he was annoying, sure, but they didn’t hate him.
Sounds like your classmates were assholes just like the villains in the book. I had a lot of empathy for Piggy and was extremely disturbed by his death.
As a short-sighted person, I couldn’t get over the way they described the lens starting the fire, because it doesn’t work that way and took me completely out of the book.
I think him having died with the conch was a great touch to the story. The conch was a symbol of order, and Piggy was a symbol of rationality. Having both of them gone at the same time said that there was no going back to peace if they stayed on the island.
Try not to get shipwrecked in a desert island with your classmates…
Okay but, suck to his ass-ma